Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 08, 2010 @09:59AM
from the everybody-gets-one-in-the-tailpipe dept.

mngdih writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back ... His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals saying it's legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect's car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway. ... 'We have all the information we needed,' they told him. 'You don't need to call your lawyer. Don't worry, you're boring.'"

If you just find one of these and don't realize that it belongs to the FBI, and think "doesn't belong" and destory it (or just toss it in a dumpster), are you liable to pay for it when the FBI comes to get it back?

If I ever found one of these things on my car (which I probably won't), I'd sell it to the highest bidder on ebay.

Then I'd go to jail.

Where I'd write my version of Mein Kampf. And sell it to become a millionaire when I get out. BTW I think it's horrible the US Government was using racial profiling to track this arab student. Apparently it's wrong when the AZ government does it, but it's okay for the US? They should be required to get search warrant FIRST before wire-tapping..... I mean GPS-tapping a ca

~50,000 students attend that school and none of them are being tracked,

Are you an official spokesman for the FBI who has firsthand knowledge of this as a fact, or are you making this up as you go along?

... except the Arabic one who has no prior criminal history/evidence of wrong doing.

After reading the Wired article, we learn many things:

His father took the family back to Egypt, but he alone returned.

He regularly sends money back to people (his brothers) in Egypt.

His "friend" allegedly posted something about bombs on a website and was known to be under investigation.

He was contacted by the FBI before for questioning.

He's on the watch list for flying.

His lawyer is a member of CAIR. CAIR:

"seeks to empower the American Muslim community and encourage its social and political activism.", according to wikipedia.

was created by "three officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine" (ibid), and we all know that Palestinians have absolutely no axe to grind with the US.

In 1998, Omar Ahmad (a joint founder of CAIR) was reported to have said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

He's going on "a short business trip" to Dubai in a few weeks.

Of course, none of that is illegal, but neither is going to a flight school and asking to taught how to fly. The point being, those who claim he was targeted only because he was half-Egytian or that this is based on profiling aren't looking at the entire picture.

CAIR, in particular, looks a lot like the German-American Bund from pre-WWII days. They claimed to be formed to further German-American relations, but promoted Nazi propaganda and anti-semitism, as well as being a cover for espionage.

The fact he was knowingly driving with expired plates makes him a valid traffic stop by any policeman he goes by.

I just read TFA, I think the kid was in a no-win situation and (for him, under those circumstances) did the best thing for his own interests. Not that it's right and not that I fully agree with it, but it's clear to me he would have had quite a hassle had he destroyed or messed with the tracking device.

Now, if he had an attitude or a temper or a point to prove, and had lots of free lawyer service saved up, he definitely could have played with the fbi guys.

With his background, obviously he fits a "profile" and is one of many many people being tracked.

I remember hearing about East Germany during the heyday. I heard that about 50% of the people were in some way affiliated with the government, so basically each person had another person watching them. Everyone was under surveillance by everyone else. Not sure how true that was, but it can't be too far from the truth, lol.

My point is, the FBI must have an enormous amount of people being watched. How many agents are there who watch all those people? Amazing. And how boring that must be, doing surveillance all day every day. And paperwork after that.

The article is a good read and a little creepy. We're here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now...We.re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate"

Summary: not illegal/unconstitutional for the government to track your car, probably a crime if you find tracker and do anything with it.

You would hope that they would charge you for it, meaning they will just put an entry into the US Treasury to withhold your next 10 tax returns until the unit is paid for. Otherwise they can simply put you on the "No Fly List"..that is what they mean by "making it difficult for you". They will simply label you a terrorist or send your name to ICE..the world is their oyster, and you are nothing but a pawn.
As a (former) cop, I've watched other cops label innocent people as "Scumbags" and their life was hell in this jurisdiction from then on. A cop just has to "say" you did something to cause you irreparable grief. He doesn't have to prove anything until you go to court. I could only imagine an FBI agent and what his ego could do. Anybody in law enforcement, at every level, is an infantile egomaniac.

As a (former) cop.... Anybody in law enforcement, at every level, is an infantile egomaniac.

If there's one thing I've learned from being a part of large government organizations, it's that any individual can only really speak about himself. Any time you hear a soldier, cop, or politician speak about their field of work, they tell you more about themselves than they do about the organization.

If there's one thing he's learned from being a part of large government organizations, it's that there's one thing he's learned from being a part of large government organizations, which is that there is one thing he's learned from being a part of large government organizations, it being that there is one thing he has learned...

Now let's look at how often the Supreme Court decides that the 9th got it wrong. Last term, the Supreme Court's reversal rate for 9th Circuit cases was 90.5 percent. Yikes—that's huge! But wait, for on-the-merits cases, the Supremes reversed the 3rd and 5th Circuits almost all of the time* last term. Cases from state appellate courts fared no better: They also had a 100 percent reversal rate. Overall, this past term the Supreme Court reversed 75.3 percent of the cases they considered on their merits. The pattern holds true for the 2004 and 2005 terms as well, when the Supremes had overall reversal rates of 76.8 percent and 75.6 percent, respectively. For those years, the 9th was reversed 84 percent and 88.9 percent of the time, or about a case or two more each year than it would have been if it had conformed to the reversal rate of the other circuits. How do one or two cases a year add up to a court run amuck?

How about the FBI throws you in jail for destruction of government property, obstruction, and any other charges they decide to toss your way (rightfully or not)? Is the amount of time spent sitting in a cell, the money lost in lawyers fees, and the hassle of going to court really worth it?

The finder of a thing usually seems to have to make a reasonable attempt at finding the owner of an item (and "reasonable" varies quite a lot from place to place), and if it is unclaimed after 30 days, then they are entitled to keep it.

Generally speaking, YMMV, IANAL, so on, so forth.

But since the FBI asked for their widget back within 30 days, I guess that it's theirs to recover.

(Whether or not I think this is morally right is a different discussion entirely. Personally, I'd like to think that if I find a tracking widget on my car, that it's henceforth mine. However...)

This is NOT a good analogy. The iPhone was found in a bar, and the jackass that "found" it knew whose it was and made no attempt to give it back. This device was intentionally left attached to the car, with the hope that it would never be found. Basically, the two situations are opposites of each other.

All laws about this aren't the same. There are three different kinds of laws on this topic.

There's the 'forgot to pick up' law, where you accidentally put something somewhere and forget to get it, like setting your wallet down in a checkout line.

And there's the 'dropped' law, where you did not know it left your possession.

These are, believe it or not, often covered under different state laws.

For example, the rule with the first is often if you find something you think someone has accidentally left, you should keep it there, at least for some specified time. If a customer walks out of a restaurant without their purse, the restaurant should hold their purse for them.

Whereas with the second, if you find a wallet in the middle of the sidewalk, or even if you find one in the middle of the hall in the exact same restaurant, you're supposed to turn it in to the police. 'The Place' gets things left behind, where people can go back and get them, the police get things that just fell there, where people possibly have no idea where they are.

Generally. Of course, laws vary by state, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that even truly 'lost' items get treated differently depending on how they got lost.

And neither of those cover deliberately leaving something somewhere on someone else's property. If such a law exists, it's a different law. As far as I know, you don't have any obligation to take care of people's property and make sure they can find their stuff when they do that, like you do when they accidentally give you possession. OTOH, you can't deliberately break their stuff either.

I still think the best bet is to take the thing apart and claim you thought it was part of the car. (Or, rather, plead the fifth and have your lawyer point out they haven't proven you knew it wasn't part of the car.)

OTOH, if you really wanted to screw with the 'lost property' stuff, you put your car inside a giant metal box and hide it in a warehouse somewhere. You have not damaged their tracker at all.

And by them attaching the tracker, they've just admitted that they're recording the location of your car. So there's no way in hell they can force you to reveal the location of your car, because, duh, that's testifying against yourself. (Think about it for a second. If the FBI is collecting 'the location of the car', then 'the location of the car' is clearly being used as evidence in an investigation, presumably against you, so if you're forced to tell them 'the location of the car'...)

Now, a court could demand you turn it over, or be in contempt, but they're actually have to go through the court to do that. And you're still have a pretty interesting argument, namely, that you're not willing to remove something they attached to your car, as you have no experience in that sort of thing and they've threatened to sue you if you damage it.(And you still can't be forced to tell them where the car is.) So, while you'd like for them to get their tracker back, there appears to be no way to actually accomplish that.

At the point that the FBI is secretly attaching tracking devices to your car, being 'legally right' is moot. They are already carrying out secret operations against you. Your better bet is to just let as many people know what is going on as possible, so when you disappear, there is some hope that you will be found.

being 'legally right' is moot. They are already carrying out secret operations against you.

I think you mean "They are already carrying out completely legal operations against you, using the legitimate and constitutional authority granted to them by a court of law," right?

You may not LIKE the authority they're given, but as the law stands today, they absolutely have every right to do it, and it *is* legal for them to do it. If you don't LIKE it, you should vote for legislative candidates who will promise to do something about the issue that concerns you. Or, become a candidate yourself, and educate your fellow citizens about the abuses of power you will correct when you're a representative or senator.

Call the police. Seriously. You don't know what the thing is why the fuck would you drive around in the car once you know it is there. You don't have to fiddle with the courts where no one hears your story instead journalists will start asking the questions that the FBI won't like hearing the answers to.

Better yet, park your car outside a government building and then call the police saying there is a suspicious device attached to your car. Hey, you did the right, thing, right? How can they fault you? You didn't put it there, don't know what it is or what it does, so you called the police. I mean really, the thing looks like a transmitter attached to a pipe bomb, what would you think? The resulting traffic jam and media coverage of shutting down part of town while the city's bomb squad recovers an FBI tracking device (or, possibly blows up your car just to be safe) would be pretty embarrassing for the FBI. Would kinda suck to loose the car though.

So what you're saying is that we've gone from "give me liberty or give me death" to "don't throw me in jail because it will make me uncomfortable".

As to your last question. YES IT IS WORTH IT. Liberty is always worth the penalty for it, the other option is to acquiesce to slavery. This is no different. Tyranny must be fought with everything we have, because the other options aren't pretty.

Not that I disagree with you, but there is a pretty wide gap between saying something like this on the Internet and actually following through with it in the real world.

There's obviously no way for me to know your level of life-experience but if a person is not normally subjected to direct pain and suffering or is blissfully unaware of it the amount of effort required to force them into acquiescence is minimal. Withstanding that kind of pressure isn't as simple as you make it sound.

Especially if you have a family you are taking care of. You have that extra drive to make sure your daughter will grow up in a free country, but that's tempered by the knowledge that certain acts of civil disobedience (or extrapolating to an illegally oppressive government - those may be acts of constitutional obedience) may place you in custody/court for a sufficient amount of time to lose your job. That could result in failure to pay mortgage, inability to obtain another job within your career, etc...

This is the insidious danger inherent in the erosion of freedom: not enough to die for, not even enough to make you homeless or hungry or inconvenienced over, but enough, over time, to leave you with a shallow shadow of what our ancestors died for.

Forming the red-neck militia and stocking up on canned bacon isn't the way to go about changing it. We have laws. We have law makers. Getting one to change the other is the way. Oh, you can't get rid of your local politician because everyone else votes for him? Well, that doesn't give you the right skip the democratic process just because you don't like the results. "It's not tyranny when I do it" just doesn't cut it.

Um, you do know how the United States became an independent country, no? I suppose it's a matter of opinion whether the founding fathers should have fought it out in Parliament instead of on the battlefield the Revolutionary War, but their choice WAS the foundation of the country.

An excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to

Your in college and find a strange device attached to your car.I don't know about you but I would have taken it apart to see what it was. I would have figured it was some joke a friend had made.If it wasn't marked as federal property how should I know?

Well they told him "It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now. [...] We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate." If you want to pick a fight with these thugs then call the ACLU - trying to piss them off might not be such a great idea.

My guess is they likely go in from underneath, not through the hood. It's quicker, doesn't involve having to open the door, actually go inside the car (where someone is much more likely to notice that something has been tampered with), etc.

Freedom must include freedom to be in a government, or any other organization. If freedom only exists when there is no government, we have a paradox. You cannot be free to be in a government if you cannot have a government.

Secondly, you're only defining personal freedom, not collective freedom or any other kind of freedom. Freedom is not a thing, it is an attribute of a thing. Freedom in the abstract has no meaning, you can only have a freedom of.

No. It wouldn't be considered theft--or a trespass. That's an easy call.

It MIGHT be considered a "taking" within 5th Amendment jurisprudence. The 5th Amendment says that you can't take a person's property without just compensation. I'm not going to do the research for a/. posting that even I would urge not to be taken seriously, but the law's not absolutely clear on this.

If the cops rip your house apart pursuant to a judicially authorized search warrant, that is a legitimate exercise of the police power. The government may do that without compensation (in many jurisdictions) without offending the Constitution, because you are not entitled to just compensation for police power activity (think the destruction of your neighbor's house to save everybody else's house in a big fire). Many jurisdictions offer compensation for this kind of stuff because they dont' want the electorate totally pissed at them. But compensation is optional.

Now, if the cops have no probable cause and no reasonable suspicion that the target is engaging in criminal activity, has evidence of it, etc., then it may be debatable whether or not the FBI is engaging in a legitimate exercise of the "police power." This might form the basis of a legal "taking" argument because the government isn't exercising the police power--it's just plain taking.

People who are "taken" from are entitled to sue for just compensation (and if they win they get attorney fees). The FBI didnt' do much damage, but they did assert control over the person's automobile and did take power from that automobile. Even de minimis takings are takings. It could be quite a class action lawsuit (and it may very well turn out to be so).

No wonder the national deficit is getting insanely huge. Investigations of people like this guy, multiplied over and over, are phenomenally expensive. The United States is chasing its tail and it's pitifully embarrassing.

Not saying it's right, but "Afifi said he often travels for business and has two teenage brothers in Egypt whom he supports financially." Frequent traveling along with sending (presumably) large amounts of cash to the middle-east has to raise some red flags.

And? I travel often for business, have family in Indonesia (in-laws), and often send large sums abroad (which is where I live). Does that warrant people investigating me? No. Not everyone with money who travels is suspect.

Welcome to the dragnet-police-state that is America in the new millenium.

I used to be thankful I don't live their, but that was until the G20 in Toronto. Looks like your country's government's attitude towards citizen's rights its (respective) constitution has started infecting ours as well.

Normal depends on the level of detail you apply. If you report it as "sending money to family" maybe. If you report it as "sending money to Egypt" well how many Americans regularly send money to Egypt? Not many as a percentage.

The fact that he's a college student himself probably makes it very unusual. How many students send money to their families rather than vice versa? Could definitely be accepting money from one group and forwarding it on himself.

Or drop it off at the police station or mail it to the FBI. An unmarked box containing electronics that sends out transmissions? They'll get the bomb squad to deal with it. Then it ends up on the news, and people will actually hear about it.

It would be really interesting to see what would have happened had he disposed of it in a lake before the FBI showed up. There's nothing in the photo to indicate that it belongs to the government; it could have been placed by a private detective. As far as I'm concerned, if you attach something to my car without my permission, it's mine.

Or, better yet, call 911 and report a suspicious device attached to your car. Given what I saw in the picture, that would've been my first step. The device itself isn't easily distinguishable from a bomb. It's clearly got at least 3 of the components necessary, and I personally wouldn't go screwing around with something that has that many components without a robot to do it for me.

What if it's in the driveway of my fenced, gated (and gate closed) house, possibly with a guard dog or three roaming the premises?

I think if I found someone crawling under my car in my unfenced, ungated driveway, placing some device on my car, I'd be cueing up the track of a shotgun being pumped on my MP3 player, then playing it real loud for the perp under my car.

If you look further in the article, you can reconstruct a hypothetical scenario which, from the FBI's point of view, looks completely normal:

Young Arab American named Khaled writes a blog post hinting at something violent: (TFA: "When he later asked Khaled about the post, his friend recalled “writing something stupid,” but said he wasn’t involved in any wrongdoing.")

FBI gets warrants to track whereabouts of Khalid and his friends, one of whom is Afifi (TFA: "[A former FBI agent] said he was certain that agents who installed it would have obtained a 30-day warrant for its use.")

FBI plants device on Afifi's car.

Afifi finds the device during a routine check-up

FBI notices the thing isn't moving, and/or notice the photos online, and decide to show their cards; especially since they're convinced he's not important anyway.

It's of course a bit scary to have people tracking you when you didn't do anything wrong; and it sounds like there was some annoying bullying (TFA: "[The FBI agent] told Afifi, “We’re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don’t cooperate.”) But it sounds like there's an explanation of how this could have happened by-the-book, and the FBI is doing their job.

I have no problem with the FBI putting tracking devices on people on whom they are conducting a legitimate investigation. I have a huge problem with the fact that they can do it now on minimum suspicion and without a warrant.

First, given all the trouble [washingtonpost.com] the FBI has had issuing legal National Security Letters, I wouldn't assume that there's a valid warrant until I read it.

Second, if stalking immigrant kids is the FBI "doing their job", they should find a different job. Getting a warrant requires "probable cause". Probable refers to probability. How many of these fishing expeditions has the FBI gone on? If less than 50% of them lead to arrests, they are getting warrants for improbable causes. That's unconstitutional.

bombing a mall seems so easy to do. i mean all you really need is a bomb, a regular outfit so you arent the crazy guy in a trench coat trying to blow up a mall and a shopping bag. i mean if terrorism were actually a legitimate threat, think about how many fucking malls would have blown up already.. you can put a bag in a million different places, there would be no way to foresee the next target, and really no way to prevent it unless CTU gets some intel at the last minute in which case every city but LA is fucked...so...yea...now i'm surely bugged :/

If that post gets you FBI monitoring... The FBI has WAYYYY too much time on their hands. But one has to laugh at the irony of the "I'm surely bugged"...

Someone doing that in my neck of the woods would be greeted by a shotgun-toting homeowner and held for trespassing until the Sheriff showed up.

The Fourth Amendment reads:

``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.''

If there's no warrant or probable cause or justifiable reason to be there, they had better stay off my property.

Six months ago, a former roommate of his was visited by FBI agents who said they wanted to speak with Afifi. Afifi contacted one agent and was told the agency received an anonymous tip from someone saying he might be a threat to national security. Afifi told the agent he was willing to answer questions if his lawyer approved. But after Afifi's lawyer contacted the agency, he never heard from the feds again until he found their tracking device.

After reading the TFA (yeah, I know) the FBI actions
seem warranted, even though they didn't have a warrant.

Score 1 for the FBI. Epic fail for the 9th circuit.
Even though they were right, they still should have gone
through the proper procedure.

I don't know about you, but I'm willing to pay an extra
$1/year in taxes so the FBI follows proper procedure and
gets a warrant. If everybody pays that, it's about $300 million.
I doubt it would even cost that much to actually do what
the Constitution requires. You know, that document that you
SWORE TO UPHOLD AND DEFEND?

10. Place it on your ex-girlfriend's car.
9. Place it on a train.
8. Place it on a freighter carrying electronics to be recycled in China.
7 Place it in your carry-on luggage and watch the fun at airport security.
6. Dial 911 and tell them you've found a bomb on your car. Invite TV news crews to come watch the fun.
5. Give it to your local ACLU and tell them to make the FBI prove it's theirs before handing it back.
4. Pretend you don't know it's there, and drive to as many Tea Party events as possible.
3. Build an autonomous flying drone capable of carrying it and program it to fly around in circles all day.
2. Hack its logic to input arbitrary coordinates and make virtual visits to places you've always wanted to see.
1. Pretend it's not there and go on a tour of the most patriotic American landmarks to demonstrate your loyalty to the United States.

"Hello, Police? Yes, my mechanic has found what appears to be a pipe bomb attached to the underside of my car. Could you please send some units, and bomb disposal, here immediately, I am concerned for my life."

It's a long black pipe, sealed at both ends, with an antenna wire hanging out of it, and magnets to secure it in place. While it may be a GPS tracker, it could just as likely been a pipe bomb with a remote trigger. Best let the authorities blow that sucker up. And if the FBI come by asking for their tracker back, you can have them arrested for instigating an act of terror on American soil by planting their "pipe-bomb" on your car.

A large radio station had a badly-tuned transmitter that jammed the lower half of the FM band in a major city for years, affecting radio reception in the (poor) quarter of the city badly, and making those low-power personal FM transmitters (for use with ipods) useless within 30 miles.

The residents of that neighborhood heard (shitty) gospel music over their land lines, the signal leakage was so bad.

These are definitely prohibited by the FCC / FAA. Even a GPS re-radiation system (for bringing GPS indoors) must be registered with the authorities. I have personally been witness to this situation when a company that makes re-rad devices was not checking that its customers were authorized to use the equipment. The FCC / FAA tracked them down and made them contact all their customers to register their equipment.

he was planning a short business trip to Dubai in a few weeks... has two teenage brothers in Egypt whom he supports financially....

Afifi's father, Aladdin Afifi, was a U.S. citizen and former president of the Muslim Community Association here, before his family moved to Egypt in 2003. Yasir Afifi returned to the U.S. alone in 2008, while his father and brothers stayed in Egypt, to further his education he said. He knows he's on a federal watchlist and is regularly taken aside at airports for secondary screening.

Fits the profile of someone you want to keep an eye on pretty well, actually.